While important details about Edward Snowden’s activities in Hong Kong remain shrouded in secrecy, the conventional portrait of his stay there and in Russia as one of improvisation and serendipity is at odds with the precision of his well-planned thefts.

Until March 15, 2013, Mr. Snowden worked at the NSA base in Honolulu for Dell, the outside contractor which supplied technicians to work on the NSA’s backup system. From this vantage point, he had access to the NSA Net, from which he pilfered most of the documents he later gave to journalists including the ones about NSA domestic operations that have preoccupied the world’s media.

But he quit Dell and moved to Booz Allen Hamilton, the outside contractor that ran the computer systems in the NSA’s Threat Operations Center. Here he could get access to the crown jewels, the lists of computers in four adversary nations—Russia, China, North Korea and Iran—that the agency had penetrated. He later told the South China Morning Post that his whole reason for making the job switch was to get “access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked.”

He carried out that theft, which included stealing passwords that gave him access to secret files, with great precision. There is no reason to assume that his getaway was any less deliberately planned.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. must return a $539 million deposit from Argentina intended for restructured bondholders, a U.S. judge ruled, calling the transfer an “explosive action” that disrupted potential settlement talks with holders of defaulted debt.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa in New York has ruled that Argentina can’t pay holders of its restructured debt without also paying more than $1.5 billion to a group of defaulted bondholders, raising the possibility of a new default as the South American nation approaches a June 30 payment deadline.

Robert Cohen, a lawyer for hedge funds holding the defaulted debt, told Griesa that Argentina “defiantly and contemptuously” violated his court orders.

The Vatican has defrocked its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, an archbishop from Poland who was accused of sexually abusing boys while he served as the pope’s representative in the Caribbean nation.

The former archbishop, Jozef Wesolowski, 65, is the first papal nuncio known to have been removed from the priesthood because of accusations of child sexual abuse.

The charges relate to the acquisition of the company that prints the country’s currency, and of benefiting from government contracts.

Mr. Boudou is accused of using shell companies and secret middlemen to gain control of the company that was given contracts to print the Argentine peso and campaign material for the ticket he shared with President Cristina Fernandez.

provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven days a week, 365 days a year. … There will be approximately 65,000 [unaccompanied alien children] in total.

I don’t care if the next two years are a constant series of lawsuits decided by the Supreme Court — in fact, I’d prefer it.

Do they imagine they’ve got some advantage here, going into the elections, with hundreds of thousands of immigrant children now enticed to cross the border illegally thanks to their policies?

Neoneocon’s late commenter FredHJr had an observation that may shed some light on that,

Obama is part of a nexus of interests. What the American dopes who will put him in office are getting is a NETWORK of alliances and interests, running the gamut from Finance (Soros) to academia to media to law. Thus far, in order to appeal to the Middle Muddle he has been packaged as a moderate or centrist. But once in office the venomous swarm of this network will burst out of the nest and devour the host. You wait and see. And I’m not eager for the moment to say “I told you so.” I really would it be the case that it never happens at all. Why? Because the lives of tens of millions of human beings hang in the balance of this and mushroom clouds on the horizon. I put the value of human life far above my own frustrated rantings.

talking about the US-Latin America stories of the week: Joe Biden trips to Brazil and Central America, the upcoming North Korean embassy in Caracas, and other topics, all archived for your listening convenience.

A review of Al-Jazeera’s Fault Lines documentary, Venezuela Divided:
Al-Jazeera sent me information and a preview link to its Fault Lines documentary, Venezuela Divided, which will air on Al Jazeera America Saturday, June 28, at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

Venezuela Divided starts by contrasting a slum with an ice cream shop in a middle-to-upper class neighborhood, in the premise that it’s all “rich vs. poor”; the possibility that some of the people in the ice cream shop may be high-ranking chavistas or their relatives does not cross the reporter’s mind.